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her a last, amused glance before he closed the door.
Kasie dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt. She put her long hair in
a braid and pulled on sneakers. She felt a twinge of guilt because
she'd missed so many Sunday sermons in past months. But she
couldn't reconcile her pain. It needed more time.
The whole family was at the table when she joined them for
breakfast. John gave her a warm smile.
"I hear you had visitors last night," he told Kasie with a mischie-
vous glance at the two little girls, who were wolfing down cereal.
"Yes, I did," Kasie replied with a worried glance that encompassed
both Gil and Miss Parsons.
"You should have called me, Miss Mayfield," Miss Penny Parsons
said curtly and glanced at Kasie with cold dark eyes. "I take care
of the children."
Kasie could have argued that point, but she didn't dare. "Yes,
Miss Parsons," she said demurely.
Gil finished his scrambled eggs and lifted his coffee cup to his firm
lips. He was wearing slacks and a neat yellow sports shirt that
emphasized his muscular arms. He looked elegant even in casual
wear, Kasie thought, and remembered suddenly the feel of those
strong arms around her. She flushed.
He noticed her sudden color and caught her gaze. She couldn't
seem to look away, and he didn't even try to. For a space of sec-
onds, they were fused in some sort of bond, prisoners of a sen-
sual connection that made Kasie's full lips part abruptly. His gaze
fell to them and lingered with unexpected hunger.
Kasie dropped her fork onto her plate and jumped at the noise.
"Sorry!" she said huskily as she fumbled with the fork.
"Didn't get much sleep last night, did you?" John asked with a
smile. "Neither did any of us. About midnight, I thought seriously
about giving up cattle ranching and becoming a door-to-door vac-
uum cleaner salesman."
"I felt the same way," Gil confessed. "We're going to have to put a
small line cabin out at the holding pens and keep a man there on
stormy nights."
"As long as I'm not on your list of candidates," John told his
brother.
"I'll keep that in mind. Bess, don't play with your food, please," he
added to the little girl, who was finished with her cereal and was
now smearing eggs around the rim of her plate.
"I don't like eggs, Daddy," she muttered. "Do I gotta eat
'em?"
"Of course you do, young lady!" Miss Parsons said curtly. "Every
last morsel." Bess looked tortured.
"Miss Parsons, could you ask Mrs. Charters to see me before she
plans the supper menu, please?" Gil asked.
Miss Parsons got up. "I will. Eat those eggs, Bess."
She left. Gil gave his oldest daughter a sign by placing his forefin-
ger across his mouth. He lifted Bess's plate, scraped the eggs
onto his, and finished them off before Miss Parsons returned.
"Very good," she said, nodding approvingly at Bess's plate. "I told
you that you'd grow accustomed to a balanced breakfast. We
must keep our bodies healthy. Come on, now, girls. We'll have a
nice nap until your father's ready to go to the movies."
Bess grimaced, but she didn't protest. She got up with Jenny and
was shepherded out by the governess.
"Marshmallow," John chided the older man, poking the air with his
fork. "You should have made her eat them herself."
"When you start eating liver and onions voluntarily, I'll make Bess
eat eggs," Gil promised. "Want to come with us to the movies?"
He named the picture they were going to see.
"Not me," John said pleasantly. "I'm going to Billings to see a man
about some more acreage." He glanced at Kasie speculatively.
"Want to tag along, Kasie?"
The question surprised her. While she was trying to think of a po-
lite way to say she didn't, Gil answered for her.
"Kasie's going with us to the movies," he replied, and his pale
eyes dared her to argue. "The girls will have conniptions if we
leave her behind. Besides, she likes cartoons. Don't you, Kasie?"
"I'm just crazy about them, Mr. Callister," she agreed with a tight
smile, angry because he'd more or less forced her into agreeing
to go.
"Mr. Callister was our father," Gil said firmly. "Don't use it with us."
She grimaced. "I work for you. It doesn't seem right."
John was gaping at her. "You're kidding."
"No, she isn't," Gil assured him. "When you have a free minute,
get her to tell you why she braids her hair. It's a hoot."
She glared at Gil. "You cut that out."
He wiped his mouth with a white linen napkin and got to his feet.
"I've got some phone calls to make before we go. We'll leave at
one, Kasie."
"Phone calls on Sunday?" she asked John when his brother had
left them alone.
"It's yesterday in some parts of the world, and tomorrow in some
other parts," he reminded her. "You know how he is about busi-
ness."
"Yes," she agreed.
"What amazes me," he mused, watching her, "is how much he
grumbles about you. He loves women, as a rule. He's always do-
ing little things to make the job easier for Mrs. Charters. He lets
Pauline get away with only working three days of the week, when
he needs a full-time secretary worse than I do. But he's hard on
you."
"He doesn't like me," she said quietly. "He can't help it."
"You don't like him, either."
She smiled sheepishly. "I can't help it, either." She picked up on
something he'd said earlier. "How can Pauline make ends meet
with only a part-time job?" she asked curiously.
"She's independently wealthy," John told her. "She doesn't need a
job at all, but she caught Gil at a weak moment. He doesn't have
many of them, believe me. I think she attracted him at first. Now
things have cooled and he's stuck with her. She's tenacious."
"Why would she need to work?" she wondered aloud.
"Because Gil needed a secretary, of course. She hasn't had any
business training, and I don't doubt that the files are in a hella-
cious mess."
"Couldn't he get somebody else?"
"He tried to. Pauline cried all over him and he gave up." "He
doesn't look like a man who'd even notice tears," she said ab-
sently.
"Appearances are deceptive. You saw how he was when the dog
threatened the girls," he reminded her. "He's not immune to
tears."
"I'd need convincing," she said and grinned wickedly.
He leaned back in his chair with his coffee cup in his hand and
studied her. "You're good with the kids," he said. "You must have
spent a lot of time around children."
She lowered her eyes to her empty plate. "I did. I'm not formally
taught or anything, but I do know a few things."
"It shows. I've never seen Bess respond to any of her various
governesses. She liked you on sight."
"How many governesses has she had?" she asked curiously.
"Four. This year," he amended.
Her eyebrows arched. "Why so many?"
"Are you afraid of spiders, garter snakes, or frogs?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Why?"
"Well, the others were. They got downright twitchy about opening
drawers or pulling down bedcovers," he recalled with a chuckle.
"Bess likes garter snakes. She shared them with the gov-
ernesses."
"Oh, dear," Kasie said.
"You see the point. That's why Miss Parsons was hired. She's the
next best thing to a Marine DI, as you may have noticed."
Her face lightened. "So that's why he hired her. I did wonder."
John sighed. "I wish he'd hired her to do the tax work on the pay-
roll instead. She's a natural, and since she's a retired accountant
that experience would make her an asset. We have a firm of
C.P.A.'s to do yearly stuff, but our bookkeeper who did payroll got
married and moved to L.A. just before we hired you."
"And Miss Parsons got hired to look after the girls. She really dis-
likes children," she added.
"I know. But Gil refuses to believe it. He's been lax about work at
the ranch for a while. He stayed on the road more and more,
avoiding the memories after Darlene died. I felt bad for him, but
things were going to pot here. I have to travel to show the bulls,"
he added, "because the more competitions we win, the higher the
prices we can charge for stud fees or young bulls. The ranch can't
run without anybody overseeing it." He pursed his lips as he stud- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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